May’s Mutterings: Rants and Ramblings
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Children’s Ball 2014
The Children’s Ball, a fundraiser to benefit the Children’s National Medical Center, was held on Friday, April 11 at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, DC. The Ball was co-chaired by Yousef and Abeer Al-Otaiba (the UAE Ambassador and his wife) and Amy and Bret Baier. There were over 900 people in attendance with a lengthy waitlist…
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Spring Break in the United Arab Emirates
The UAE might come across as a strange choice for a spring break destination, but we chose it for several reasons. First, it’s a warm climate destination and after the winter we’ve had, none of us had any desire to go somewhere cold. Second, we thought it would be a good experience for the kids. …
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Be Our Guest restaurant (Disneyworld)
One of the newest restaurants in the Magic Kingdom in Disneyworld is the Be Our Guest restaurant, located in the Beast’s castle in the new part of Fantasyland. We were lucky enough to get a dinner reservation due to a cancellation when we were last there in March. Dinner was quite the spectacular evening. To…
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Book review: A Play of Piety by Margaret Frazer
A Play of Piety by Margaret Frazer My rating: 4 of 5 stars It’s impossible to review this book without the context of the previous five in the series (A Play of Isaac, A Play of Dux Moraud, A Play of Knaves, A Play of Lords, and A Play of Treachery), not to mention the…
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Movie review: Captain Phillips
I know, I know, Captain Phillips has been out for months. But getting to a movie theatre takes an immense amount of effort for me (you actually have to show up at a certain place at a certain time and sit in the dark for 2 hours). Reserved seating helps some, though. This time, I…
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Book review: Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich
Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich My rating: 3 of 5 stars I really like this series. The main characters are well-rounded and often goofily humorous, the dialogue is crisp and witty, and the plots are well paced. It’s a perfect beach read (or, as I like to say, excellent mind candy). Sizzling Sixteen is no…
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A Palo Alto Wedding
I took our 12 year old son to Palo Alto for a cousin’s wedding on March 15. We arrived in Palo Alto late Friday night (which was made even later with a request for a late-night snack of black truffle French fries). Once we finally got up on Saturday, we made the obligatory brain-washing visit…
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Mamma Mia!
We took the kids to see Mamma Mia! (the musical) a couple of weeks ago at the National Theatre in Washington, DC. It was a fun production with a very good cast, all of whom looked like they were having a lot of fun. The lead character (the mother), in particular, had a lovely voice,…
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Chef Mavro
In our latest visit to Honolulu, we decided to dine at Chef Mavro, a restaurant we had dined at several years ago but had not revisited since. The first time we ate there, it was a Valentine’s Day fixed menu, and we thought the dinner was good but not great. However, we revised our opinion…
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Hawaii, No Kids
Jim and I had a wedding in the Bay Area last Saturday (congratulations to Anne Craib and Jim Farmer—it was a beautiful wedding!). Having had to be on the West Coast anyway, we decided that since Hawaii was just a short hop away, we would spend the following week there with NO KIDS. (Not that…
Got any book recommendations?